Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/36828 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 4945
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper uses data from the German Socio-economic Panel Study to examine the relationship between psychological traits, in particular personality, and the formation and dissolution of marital and cohabiting partnerships. Changing patterns of selection into and out of relationships indicate that the determinants of marital surplus have altered between older cohorts who were born in the years after World War II and younger cohorts born in the 1960s. For younger cohorts, relationships between personality traits and the probability of marriage are identical for men and women, which is consistent with returns to marriage that are based on joint consumption. Tastes for marital public goods are negatively related to openness to experience (a desire for change and variety) and positively related to conscientiousness for both men and women. Selection into marriage is associated with distinctly different personality profiles for older men and older women, suggesting that gender-specialized contributions to household public goods were an important source of marital surplus for these cohorts.
Subjects: 
Personality
marriage
divorce
JEL: 
J12
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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